The sponge city in New Zealand
Date
2019Citation:
Sun, T. (2019) The sponge city in New Zealand. (Unpublished document submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Landscape Architecture). Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10652/4633Permanent link to Research Bank record:
https://hdl.handle.net/10652/4633Abstract
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
• How can the effects of urban flooding in New Zealand be fixed by using sponge city techniques?
• How to prevent flooding and reduce urban damage by using the sponge city strategy?
• How can the sponge city methodology help to prevent future flooding in Auckland?
ABSTRACT:
This research aims to solve the problem of urban flooding by the sponge city concept. Through the comparison with Low Impact Urban Design, Water Sensitive Urban Design and Sustainable Urban Design, the advantages and success of sponge city are demonstrated. A sponge city is a city that acts asa sponge with an urban environment planned and constructed to soak up almost every raindrop and capture that water for reuse. There are six keywords in this project, which are infiltrate, detain, absorb, clean, use and discharge.This research will mainly focus on absorb and detain. The Sponge City can absorb more rainwater through the soil into urban aquifers efficiently. The case studies present different sites around the world to show how those cases deal with urban flooding, which includes Hans Tavsens park, Yanweizhou Park, Arroyo Seco Confluence, Cermak road and Auckland International Airport. The effects of Auckland flooding were presented by media frequently. There are three main causes which could lead to urban flooding; they are irregular terrain, temperate marine climate and urbanisation. Various data from the Whau catchment indicate a strong connection between topography and flooding, so the design area will focus on the upstream flood areas to mitigate urban flood pressure and risk.
This research presents five design works, which all near or in the flooding area.These five sites will combine five different landscape techniques through thesponge city concept, which are detention pond, widen and deepen stream, raingarden, porous pavement and green roof. Then there will be a list of threedifferent design options in the first two designs to show different focused andsuccess through comparing advantage and flood capacity..